Thursday, November 19, 2009

Need another reason to be happy about not getting mammogram from age 40 on?

Skipping them will reduce your risk of breast cancer by reducing your exposure to radiation. Here's the explanation for how that happens, from the Cancer Prevention Coalition:

Thus, premenopausal women undergoing annual screening over a ten-year period are exposed to a total of about 10 rads for each breast. As emphasized some three decades ago, the premenopausal breast is highly sensitive to radiation, each rad of exposure increasing breast cancer risk by 1 percent, resulting in a cumulative 10 percent increased risk over ten years of premenopausal screening, usually from ages 40 to 50 (4); risks are even greater for "baseline" screening at younger ages, for which there is no evidence of any future relevance.

If that's not enough to give you pause, look a little further at the Coalition's web site and you'll see that compressing a breast in which cancer is already growing can actually cause cancerous cells to spread.

There are all sorts of other issues with mammography, like poor quality control and the mystery of why the risk factors for breast cancer apply to white women but don't work well to predict the disease in black women.

These are the kinds of questions we should be making noise about instead of rejecting sound scientific advice about when--and whether--to have mammograms.

Here's the bottom line, folks. The uproar over the "new" recommendation that women under 50 should not get regular mammograms is all about money not women's health.

In fact, since 1971 the science has been clear that women under 50 get no benefit from regular mammograms. That is, they die just as often from breast cancer as women who haven't gotten regular mammograms. But despite getting no benefit, all too many undergo unnecessary biopsies that leave scars both physical and mental.

That was the very clear message that just came from the expert panel that finally had the guts to tell the unvarnished truth to the public. You'd think this new clarification about the lack of benefits from an unnecessary test would be greeted with cheers.

Instead, it's been treated like an assault on women motivated by a dastardly effort--by those "death panel" advocates in the Obama Administration--to cut health care costs.

So rabid has the mammography industry become about protecting its profits that it has literally become "un-American" to tell the truth about mammography.

OK. You need proof. So let's talk.

First, why should you believe me? Because I've been writing about various aspects of women's health for 30 plus years, and I spent a year as an editor at MAMM, the women's magazine whose sole topic is women's cancers. I have a shelf-full of books about women's health including one that every woman should have: The Secret History of the War on Cancer, by Devra Lee Davis, the Director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. (Look here for more about her.)

Second, even though someone is not a doctor, some facts about human breasts are easy for all of us to understand and go a long way to explaining the situation.

For instance, you might ask, what are they actually looking for on the X-ray film from a mammogram? Dr. Davis explains that they are looking for tiny white dots or other white shapes. This white "stuff," if you'll excuse the lack of scientific language, is calcium that can be left behind by cancerous cells as they grow. The breasts of women who have stopped menstruating and who are generally over 50, are fatty, and the fat shows up as black, a great background against which to see the white dots.

But the breasts of women under 50 are not fatty; they are dense, and are "riddled with lots of white spots, making it really hard to make out any tumor within," Davis writes in her book. So radiologists can only use their best guess to diagnose a particular white spot as suspicious, and most of the time--that's most of the time--they are wrong.

How wrong? In any given year, 70 of every 1,000 women under age 50 who have a mammogram will be told something suspicious has been found, meaning that over the decade between the age of 40 and 50, 700 women out of 1,000 will be told to undergo a biopsy.

Now a biopsy is no small thing. A friend of mine who underwent two of them--no cancer was found--described "excruciating pain." She was left with significant scars. And the mental anguish as women wait for the biopsy and then the result is similarly painful. Davis calls it "terror."

So if there's no benefit in terms of extending life, and all this downside of pain and anxiety--plus the expense--women under 50 should be cheering, not filled with new anxiety because of the recent announcement.

I find it shameful that most of the media coverage about the recommendations has sounded almost hysterical. You can just see the hand-wringing. The moaning about what women should do now? How will they cope? Etc. Etc.

Let's get over it, ladies. This is a step forward, not back. The advice is clear: if you're under 50, you will get no benefit from regular mammograms unless you are in a high-risk category. Over 50, you'll only have to get one every other year. That means less radiation, fewer trips to the imaging center, less humiliation as you have your boobs squished between two plates, fewer unnecessary biopsies, less mental anguish.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Back in the day, there was a website I co-founded called "SIS." It was a mix of serious news for women and a jaundiced look at some of the fantastically improbable products out there for sale.

Every month we selected a "disturbing product." We featured testicular implants for dogs, road kill jerky and other winners.

So I'm pleased to announce a revival of the Disturbing Product, and invite your nominations.

I'm starting things off with: The Trailer Hitch Toilet Seat.

Yes, this 1 5/16" steel tube, covered with soft padded camouflage material, fits right on to the trailer hitch of your car or truck, and you can own it for only $39.99!

This innovative item comes from Kotula's, whose catalog aims to please the macho man with other items like Rustic Barnboard Coolers, visors with glued-on hair , and a beer can cozy that "unleashes a satisfying burp and flashing lights" when you hit a remote so you can find where you left it.

We always awarded Bonus Points for product features or user tips that added zest to the products.

So Bonus Points to Kotulas for including these warnings for using the Trailer Hitch Toilet Seat:

"Not for use when vehicle is in motion (you moron)." And: "Can Get Slippery When Wet (you moron)." I added the moron part.

Kotula's has even created a video about the toilet seat that stars hunters in the woods stinking up the place so badly that the deer run away! A butler prepares the tailgate throne, toilet paper at the ready. Thanks, guys.

So please, when in your travels you come across a product as worthy as this, please leave a comment and a link, and I'll put it out there for everyone to enjoy.

About Me

First as the consumer reporter for Newsday and The New York Times and now as a free-lancer, I write about people who have been ripped off or hurt by the system. One story won a George Polk Award for Public Service.
I see myself as standing in for people who’ve been abused, using carefully researched and written articles to expose the truth and equalize their fight.
I quit The Times when it censored my story predicting that the Long Island Lighting Company would go bankrupt trying to build its Shoreham nuclear plant. Soon after, LILCO avoided bankruptcy thanks only to a bail-out by New York's taxpayers.
I co-founded an ad-free women’s consumer website; edited a women’s cancer magazine, and now write for magazines. I have also taught journalism at Hofstra University.
For the past 3 years, I've worn a different hat as a community organizer starting community gardens in Huntington, NY, as a co-founder of the Long Island Community Agriculture Network. Getting my hands in the earth is an antidote to the craziness of politics and public policy.